Peter Sasgen - War Plan Red

Botkin, his movements severely restricted by the bulky steam suit, held on to the socket and on tiptoe swung the other end of the tool at the valve, aiming to knock the shutoff arm off its seat to release a torrent of water. He barely had enough strength to wield the heavy wrench one-handed while he clung to a welded handhold on the reactor vessel. He hoped the valve hadn't been disconnected or installed in a dry line. If it had, it was all over.

The tool clanged against the shutoff arm and bounced off. Botkin feared it was frozen. Few systems aboard the K-480 had ever been tested much less maintained. He tried again and this time missed and almost tumbled off the rungs. When he grabbed the handhold to keep from falling, he pitched against the reactor vessel. He sprang back, leaving a huge gob of smoking silvered rubber from his suit stuck to the vessel.

Botkin felt searing pain and knew he'd been badly burned. He thought about rems, whole-body doses, bloody stools. He thought about Scott and the others waiting for him to SCRAM the reactor.

Someone was hailing him over the two-way mike, but he ignored it.

He took a firm grip on the tool and collected himself. He knew he had only a small reserve of strength left. Breathing had gotten harder, the OBA canister nearing depletion.

“You bastard!” he shouted, and swung the tool.

A torrent of water shot from the valve and over Botkin and the reactor vessel. Surprised, Botkin almost dropped the tool into the snake pit below the grates but held on and, fighting through billowing clouds of steam, threw himself on top of the water-slickened reactor dome.

He found the quench plate mechanism and flipped up the cover protecting the lockout device. He scrabbled at the interlock with a gloved hand, the fingers like thick silver tubes that refused to bend. He felt around for the two hex bolts on the quench plate release clips and positioned the socket over the first one and, his arm a blur, cranked it open as fast as he could.

It took less than half a minute to open the clips and drop both plates into the core. A moment later he heard the reactor safety interlocks lift and felt the system wind down. He thought he saw the emergency lights flicker as the power grid stepped over to battery, but he wasn’t sure. Exhausted, sick, he slid down the side of the reactor, trying not to drop the tool into the pit, and landed on hands, knees, and forehead.

Lungs bursting, he tore the hood off and gulped air heavy with water, steam, and radioactive contaminants. He heard the airlock bang open and someone calling him. But the voice was too far away to identify. And besides, he didn’t give a damn anymore. He’d saved the ship and that was enough.

“Nothing.” Captain Bayer held on to the ship-to-ship radio handset a moment longer than necessary, as if unwilling to concede defeat, then cradled it. “Narvik says they have nothing.”

Executive Officer Dass looked equally perplexed. “Well, we definitely had something, sir. Whatever it was is gone.”

Garborg agreed.

“Not gone, Mr. Dass, misplaced,” Bayer said, looking across a freshening sea at the trim gray profile of the Narvik keeping station on the Trondheim. What Bayer didn’t say was that he'd been had twice. By a Russian, he was sure.

His white teeth flashed in the gloom. “Let’s get a signal to Stavanger. Tell them what we have and ask permission to shift our area south. At the very least they’ll want to know what may be coming their way. Then you may signal Narvik, tell her we’re folding our tent here and that she should haul in on VDS.”

“Aye, sir,” said Dass. He turned to follow Bayer’s orders but stopped and said, “Gutsy bastards, aren't they, sir?”

“And damned good too.” Bayer put his 7x50s to his eyes, looked south and said, “Trouble is, their boats are as quiet at the American 688s. Put a determined skipper at the helm and they can just about go anywhere, do anything they want.”

“Sea's making up, Kapitan.”

“Bad for them, good for us,” Litvanov said. “Rough weather degrades their sonar.”

“Ours too?” Zakayev said.

“Yes, but we’re not hunting, we’re listening.”

The submarine rocked slightly from side to side from the wave action overhead. Zakayev, feeling queasy, had heard that submariners sometimes got seasick because they spent their lives submerged and weren’t used to sailing in rough weather.

“Watch your depth,” Litvanov commanded. “Careful we don’t broach.” The K-363 inched toward the surface with Litvanov’s seaman’s eye planted on the depth readout. Satisfied, he commanded, “Raise the ESM mast.”

A deep-seated fatigue had weakened Zakayev. The tension, the claustrophobic living conditions, the discomfort of life in a submarine, was something he hadn’t anticipated. The girl was also drained, her pretty face thin and drawn, her short black hair greasy and matted against her head. Yet, she hadn’t complained.

Litvanov, Zakayev had marveled, was in his element. It had almost become a game for him, and Zakayev wondered if, when the moment came for it all to end, Litvanov would regret his decision, perhaps even change his mind. Not likely, he thought, as Litvanov had from time to time reminded his crew of their responsibility to carry out what they had vowed to do. Meanwhile the game they were playing with the Norwegians kept them alert and their minds off what they would soon face.

“How will he do it?” the girl had asked Zakayev.

“Explosive charges,” he had answered.

“Will they blow up the ship?”

“No, just the important parts.”

“Will it take long after that?”

“An hour, maybe less.”

She nodded acceptance.

“Are you frightened,” he’d asked.

“I won’t be if we're together.”

Together, he thought. But it would not be pleasant, and he didn’t dissuade her from believing it would be like going to sleep. However, he was prepared to help her if it came to that.

“Kapitan, ESM contact!” brought Zakayev back to the present in the CCP. “I read four X-band commercial ship search radars and two land-based. And a Decca TM radar, probably an Oslo-class frigate.”

“ESM down. Sonar?” Litvanov queried.

“Radiated noise levels are heavily degraded, Kapitan. But I, too, have four contacts, perhaps a fifth. The four are definitely single-screw commercials.”

Litvanov noted with satisfaction that the contacts had already been entered into the fire control system as Alpha One through Five.

“How much water under the keel?”

“Sixty meters, Kapitan,” Veroshilov sang out.

“Make your depth thirty meters. Easy, and don’t overshoot.”

“Aye, Kapitan, thirty meters.”

“Those four contacts are merchantmen heading into and out of Stavanger,” Litvanov said to Zakayev. “There’ll be more of them as we work south, and we’ll use them to mask our entry into the Skagerrak. In the Kattegat, we can pick up a southbound merchantman and tuck in behind, follow him right through The Sound into the Baltic. And maybe shake those damned Norsk frigates they keep sending out.”

Zakayev recalled what he'd seen on a chart: two narrow bodies of water between Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, and a strait with an hourglasslike shape between Denmark and southern Sweden called The Sound. During their planning sessions in St. Petersburg, Litvanov had cautioned that to transit The Sound without being detected would be difficult and dangerous. Litvanov had said that he suspected that The Sound was sown with static sonar devices and other defenses to warn the Danes and Swedes of incursions by foreign submarines. “Can you do it?” Zakayev had asked. “Of course I can,” Litvanov had bragged.

Now Litvanov commanded, “Double the sonar watch. We’re closing up on Swedish waters. Starpom, you have the conn. I'll be in the wardroom.”